How Trick-or-Treating Became a Halloween Tradition
Historians say the holiday grew from Samhain, a Celtic harvest ritual, and later absorbed Church customs, trick-or-treating and modern commercial traditions.
- Today marks the convergence of Halloween, or Samhain, and the 509th anniversary of Reformation Day, which Protestant Churches globally commemorate as the start of the Protestant Reformation on October 31, 1517.
- Ancient Celtic traditions established Samhain, or the "Witch's New Year," as a time when celebrants believed the "veil" between the physical and spiritual worlds thinned, marking the harvest and welcoming "the dark half of the year."
- On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg, protesting the Roman Church's practice of selling indulgences to fund St Peter's and bribes for the Archbishop of Mainz.
- Modern traditions like trick-or-treating evolved from ancient practices of "souling" and "guising," though economic analysis by Groundwork Collaborative and The Century Foundation found candy prices rose 15% this year, quadruple the inflation rate.
- Reformation ideals emphasizing individual freedom helped diminish medieval fears of "bad spirits," allowing modern societies to celebrate Halloween as fun rather than superstition, enabling participation in traditions like haunted houses.
54 Articles
54 Articles
Halloween, also known as Halloween, is celebrated on October 31st around the world, with costumes, carved pumpkins, sweets and themed parties. Although today it is mostly associated with American pop culture, this holiday has a much longer history, with its roots going back centuries to ancient Celtic customs.
Kreiszeitung
Sweets, hollowed-out vegetables and the idea that on the night of November 1st, the boundaries between this and the afterlife are blurring: Many of the Halloween brides, disguised as U.S. commerce, have historical roots in the customs of old Europe.
Halloween, celebrated annually on October 31, is associated with carved pumpkins, scary costumes and children's habit of going from house to house for sweets. Today's practices bring together European traditions and North American influences.
What today is sold as an American import holiday, Halloween, is nothing more than a recent commercial reworking of a liturgy of memory born, with millennia of advance, to the South. Indeed, in the United States, the Puritan and Protestant America fiercely opposed for centuries any celebration linked to the cult of the dead who remained confined in the ghettos. The [...] The article Halloween? Other than American festival, was born in Naples 3000…
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